movie
hollywood moon
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 70-200mm 1:2.8L IS USM - iso100 - f/8 1/400 sec - Michael Grobe
Moon over Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Los Angeles. Sometimes one can find Hollywood on top of a parking garage.
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More 600mm f/4
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM - iso250 - f/8 1/2500 sec - Michael Grobe
Need to get one of these amazing Canon Tele lenses one day... love the 600mm, but the 500mm f/4 is substantially lighter and a bit smaller, so you can even hand hold it for a while. The 600mm is simply too heavy.
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM - iso100 - f/5 1/800 sec - Michael Grobe
100% crop (actual pixels): the 600mm with the 5D Mark II reveal the heat distortion around the engines of a jet. Sometimes reality looks like a crazy bump map....
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM - iso100 - f/5 1/800 sec - Michael Grobe
Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 70-200mm 1:2.8L IS USM - iso1600 - f/4.5 1/25 sec - Michael Grobe
Due to some late hours and pressing deadlines I have neglected this blog for a while. But I have been shooting...
In this case I had the opportunity to shoot my new Canon EOS 5D Mark II with the amazing Canon EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM, one of the worlds finest super-tele lenses. Since the 5DM2 arrived right before Christmas, I have been using it extensively and comparing it to my Canon EOS 1DS Mark III. My conclusion: the Canon EOS 5D Mark II delivers image quality on par with the Canon EOS 1DS Mark III and adds the long awaited low light capabilities up to usable ISO 6400 (12800 and 25600 are for emergencies only, when you need to get a photo at all). So both cameras make up a great team for all occasions, I still will grab the 1DS Mark III first for a shoot, as it has all the additional features of Canon`s Pro series bodies: weather sealing, superior autofocus (a real difference to the autofocus of the 5D Mark II), 7 brackets for HDR shooting (only 3 with the 5D Mark II, which is a deal breaker for professional use on a movie set), faster frame rate and a lot of other advantages.
But... when the last sun-rays hit the lens, the 5D Mark II starts to shine. While it can´t beat the Nikon D3 and D700 with its low light sensitivity, it comes close.
I was shooting the EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM at one of the photo shootings for a soon to come Hollywood movie together with colleagues (equipped with two Nikon D3´s). That lens is simply amazing. While you hate the weight and bulkiness (5.36 kg), you fall in love with the image quality it delivers. The shot below shows the beautiful bokeh and the incredible detail you can capture, when the lens is connected to a 21 MP 5D Mark II. The crop is at 50% magnification (1200x800 pixels at 100% scaled down to 600x400). Obviously a lens of that focal length requires a sturdy tripod and careful shooting technique: mirror lock up, remote release and either spot on autofocus or manually adjusted focus via live-view.
And what about the video capture....
of course we shot some video footage with the EF 600mm f/4 L and the 5D Mark II in HD video mode. More to come here, once I had the chance to edit the material. First impressions: I have a laughing and a crying eye (we say that in German, I guess it doesn´t translate properly to English). Why? Stay tuned...
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM - iso100 - f/5 1/500 sec
Photo by Greg Strasz
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM - iso100 - f/5 1/500 sec
50% magnification (1200x800 pixels at 100% scaled down to 600x400)
Photo by Greg Strasz
bollywood sleeps
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 24-105mm 1:4L IS USM - iso100 - f8 - 30sec - Michael Grobe
Film City - a large studio complex in the hub of the indian film industry: Bollywood in Mumbai. The state government has built Film City at the outskirts of the National Park, Goregaon, where leopards, tigers and snakes call the shots. I took the shot from the rooftop of a 22-story apartment building, just before dawn. Luckily the guard at the entrance was sleeping, when I entered around 4 am, so no questions, what I would want on the roof in the middle of the night. It was a great experience to witness dawn over Mumbai from that height. Just had to stay in the middle of the roof, as there were no railings to keep me from a final flight...
The next image is a HDR (high dynamic range) composition of 3 single shots. I used Photomatix for the exposure blending to get all the fine detail in the shadows as well as in the highlights and the sky. The exposures were taken at -1.3ev, 0ev, +1.3ev. Sometimes a range like -2,0,+2 or even wider is better, that depends on the dynamic range, that a given scenery presents to your camera. For professional work on a movie set, I normally shoot 5 exposures from -4,-2,0,+2,+4 ev, or even 7 from -6 to +6 ev, that gives enough dynamic range in most situations for real HDR image based lighting in 3D computer graphics. For pure artistic photography, that dynamic range is in most cases over the top and produces a lot of data (the 21mp raw files of the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III are around 25 mb each). If the scenery presents an extreme range from shadows to highlights, one should measure the dynamic range using a spotmeter, then bracket the exposures accordingly. It doesn´t hurt too much, to have more exposures than necessary, but it definitely hurts, if you didn´t capture the necessary range and find that out back home after the shoot...
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 24-105mm 1:4L IS USM - iso200 - f8 - 2,5sec -
HDR exposure blending of 3 shots
the eagle has landed
30/07/2008 15:55 Filed in: photos
dark wings
01/07/2008 12:07 Filed in: photos
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 24-105mm 1:4L IS USM - iso200 - f7.1 - 1/800 - Michael Grobe
“people once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead” - proem of “The Crow”
I don´t know if that bird there is even a crow, but it reminds me deeply of that movie, a favorite of mine and makes me wonder, how many great cinematic moments Brandon Lee could have given the audience, if he didn`t die while shooting that film.
So get the soundtrack from the movie, put on your headphones and fly away gothic style with “The Cure: Burn”...
